


Dark Nights

by Scattered_Irises



Series: Saffrons in the Palm of Your Hand [2]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Ending to the Illusion of Reunification, Forced Feminization, Forced Pregnancy, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 05:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17237990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scattered_Irises/pseuds/Scattered_Irises
Summary: It's those kind of nights that are the hardest to get through. The ones filled with memories, haunting him. And the waiting. The torturous waiting. To see if he would knock on his door, his cold skin forced against his.





	Dark Nights

**Author's Note:**

> It seems like you enjoyed the first one. Very well. I will serve your needs. Here is another one. Does it answer any questions or create more?

Dark Nights

 

_“Who wouldn’t want to be Lady Arclight?”_

 

  The question digs into his mind, clawing at its folds. The Resurrection Times made such absurd claims. Yet he still can’t stop thinking about that question. Those bold letters were printed black across the front page, as if they taunted him, daring him to answer its question. He saw his face on the cover in full color and winced. That wasn’t him. She looked too demure and happy to be him, looking at the camera from beneath her lashes, a small smile on her lips. Yet when he looks into the mirror, the woman stares back.

 

  It’s then that he answers the blaring letters.

 

_Me. I don’t want to be Lady Arclight._

 

_“The gowns! The beautiful stepsons! The wealth…! The historic Carnation Valley…! A loving husband! What 19 year old could be so fortunate?”_ gushes the subheading.

 

_Clothes I hate to wear. Stepsons who are as old as I am and ignore me. The corrupted wealth this family is built on. This home whose walls run with blood. A man that rapes and beats me. I was forced to leave my family and marry into this family in order to pay for my father’s crimes. What 19 year old could have been this unfortunate?_

 

_Perhaps I deserve it, though. After all, I did all of those terrible things to save Haruto. And I_ did _say that I would go to hell someday. I just didn’t expect it to be this early._

 

He takes a deep breath and looks into the mirror. A year and a half in this hell. The small lamp besides the mirror shines dimly. Someday soon, he’d tell one of the servants to fix that. Or maybe it was better this way. His reflection wasn’t really something he liked looking at. Especially now. There’s a fresh bruise around his neck, the imprint of fingers encircling the skin. Byron had begun to avoid hurting his face as of late, most likely trying to make him look more presentable in public. Not that they made many public appearances. Arclights had always been like that.

 

 They hadn’t gone to Heartland City yet, but Kaito knew a plethora of questions would follow if they did. He’d be paraded around like a trophy, forced to absorb in the wide eyed stares, chills running up his back. What would his father say, knowing Byron’s true motives? The son he had given away had been cut open and sewn back with the body of a woman. Would he even say anything? He hears Byron’s proud words clearly in his mind, as if his detestable husband was right besides him.

 

 “ _Look at what I have done to your mighty Numbers Hunter!_ _I have filled her with my seed and bear my offspring!_ ”

 

 “ _Had Kaito wanted this?_ ” the uninformed would ask.

 

 And he would force a smile and say _yes_ . Say that he had always wanted to bear children and be a loving mother. Say that he always wanted to wear beautiful dresses, the dresses themselves costing more than a weeks’ worth of an average family’s wages. Because that’s what Byron wanted him to say. If he had spoken the truth, Byron would have dragged him into a room and hit him until he bled or broke something. After that episode, _she_ would be forced to smile brightly, keep _her_ eyes lowered and say that _she_ loved him with all of _her_ heart.

 

 Kaito’s reflection looks back at him with sad eyes. When Christopher thought he wasn’t looking, he’d stare at him. Just what made Kaito so interesting, all of a sudden? Was it his restructured face? Bones sanded down in certain places, plastic added in others? The bruises that appeared on a daily basis? His hair, now grown long and worn in ringlets? Was it the breasts? Sometimes, he just wanted to scream at his mentor. How could he be so spineless?

 

 He knew that Christopher was awake on those nights. Who wouldn’t be? His screams filled the bedchamber and shook his own skull. Thomas was awake. Michael was awake. What were they doing? Cowering in their beds, it must have been. Perhaps for Thomas, shaking with impotent anger. Despite his belligerent nature, his edge had been lost. It had been beaten out of him months ago. Everyone in that house had been beaten down by Byron. Even him, he hates to admit.

 

 The screams every other night had become like wallpaper. An average sight for everyday life. As Byron choked him, as Byron restrained him, as Byron beat him, as Byron plowed into him and made him scream in pain until the tears became an endless stream out of his eyes...the brothers laid awake. Listening. Shaking. Relieved that it wasn’t them.

 

 After the first month, he had stopped screaming for Christopher. No one was coming to save him. It was better to just scream in pain than give Byron further amusement. He had his sons far too well under his power for them to save Kaito.

 

 It got quieter when the child was announced. On that day, it felt as if the staff had taken a collective sigh of relief. Byron had gotten what he had wanted. Peace would reign for a few months. The patriarch was gentler to his sons during those blessed weeks, willing to participate in philosophical debates. Even Christopher exchanged a few words with Kaito, congratulating him. Best of all, Byron had stopped requesting Kaito’s company at night. In more than 6 months, Kaito had slept in peace. It would be the closest thing the Arclights would have to peaceful normality. Everyone had been lulled into a false sense of peace, the dragon finally satisfied. Until Michael tried to escape with Kaito.

 

 They had gotten so close to the gates. As he watched Michael climb the wrought iron gates, he slowed his running. Byron would have hunted them down had they both escaped. He wouldn’t allow the child in Kaito’s womb to escape that easily. But Michael by himself...perhaps he could. After all, Byron saw his sons as useless pawns now that Kaito was here. Who would want disobedient sons when they could be replaced by another woman’s child?

 

 The guards had grabbed his arms then, dragging him back towards the mansion. When Michael was on the other side of the gate, he had looked back to see Kaito still on the other side, smiling as he was led away. Kaito still remembers the look of betrayal that filled the young Arclight’s face and the profound sadness that filled his green eyes. They had reminded him of his mother’s.

 

 As he was led through the halls, a sense of calm washed over him. At least one brother could be saved. If one of them could tell the outside world the horrors of what lay behind these gates, his sacrifice would not have been in vain. Awaiting in his study, Byron greeted Kaito with still features. But it was like a lake. Beneath its placid surface, there was always something hiding in its depths.

 

  Once the guards had left, Byron further straightened his posture.

 

 “I trust that you have been well?” he asks, not betraying a single ounce of feeling.

 

  Had he not noticed the morning sickness? The constant bouts of fatigue? Sometimes, it felt as if he was going through photon illness all over again.

 

 “Peachy,” he replies, an old habit resurfacing.

 

 Byron raised an eyebrow at that. A long moment of silence followed. Then he grabbed Kaito’s wrist. The rest is a blur.

 

  _No it wasn’t._ He knew what had happened, but he’d rather not think of it. The screaming, the needles, the chains, the _thing_ that was forced onto him, with Byron’s crest embossed on its cold metal surface, the key tucked in Byron’s pocket... _no_. He shouldn’t think of those things. Shouldn’t relive those moments of torture. It was already terrible enough, living in a body that wasn’t his and surrounded by a world that conspired against him. Kaito turns away from the mirror.

 

 And yet, and yet, other memories resurface. If he pushes one memory down, another rises up to torment him. Cold hands on his skin. The silk sheets make it even worse. It feels as if he’s drowning in the soft fabric. An open window, curtains fluttering in the slight breeze. Fingers brush against his stomach. The nails are neatly filed into squares. _Thump thump thump._ His heart pounds in his chest as if he were undergoing photon transformation, but instead of the initial rush of ecstasy, there’s only wariness.

 

 Byron’s aureolin eyes glimmer in the moonlight, almost predatory. Kaito looks out the window, trying to pretend that he wasn’t there. Even the moon was better to look at than this. _Don’t shift away from him, don’t make any other expressions...don’t bring attention to yourself...you are not here..._ the words are repeated in his mind, over and over again. He’s drifting away, floating to the moon, or wherever his momma went to. What would she have said to this? Would she be angry? Would she cry? He feels as if he can almost touch the stars, float away from Earth and never come back. Then there’s a kick from the thing deep inside of him and he’s forced back into his cruel reality.

 

 Lady Kathryn Arclight, 20 years old, wife of Byron Arclight, 47 years old. The fact weighs upon his shoulders heavily. Nausea fills his chest when he sees Byron smile.

 

 “What do we intend to name them?” he asks, ever so quietly.

 

 Despite how gentle his touch is on Kaito’s stomach, Kaito knew that his touch could become cruel in an instant. Just one mishap, just one word...He swallows, trying not to make his nervousness visible.

 

    _It. Please just call it “it” for now._ He doesn’t want to think about it too much, the thing that’s inside of him. But he must answer or else Byron would prolong his suffering.

 

 “Anything you’d like,” Kaito replies in a neutral tone, revealing nothing, trying to feel nothing.

 

  _It’s not my body so it isn’t my child anyways,_ he thinks.

 

 But regardless, he was the one who named the child. _Marleen_. She came into the world screaming, as if she knew that this wasn’t right. The midwife held her in her arms, wrapped in a scarlet blanket. Byron’s face was impassive. He had wanted a son. As if three weren’t enough.

 

 Kaito wasn’t looking at Haruto or Dr. Faker, but he didn’t want to. What if he saw fear? Or worse, what if he saw repulsion, especially in Haruto’s eyes? It was already too much. His family, the two Arclight brothers, Byron, the midwife and the doctor were all packed inside of the room that once seemed too large. Now it seemed too small.

 

 5 hours of painful labor tended to do things to you, especially when the pain wasn’t dulled by drugs. That was Byron’s decision, a knife twisting into an already bloody wound. Throughout those 9 months, he had been much more forgiving. Now Kaito understood why. He must have enjoyed the screaming, absent those past few months...Save for that one week.

 

 “What will her name be?” asks the doctor, her expression genuine and kind.

 

 Her voice was like a hand that reached into the ocean, pulling Kaito out of the water. A brief moment of clarity fills his mind. She had such pretty green eyes. A small smile fills her lips and they reach the edges of her eyes, where crows’ feet edge the tips. Perhaps his momma would have looked like that, had she lived. Laugh lines and crow’s feet had a way of softening an expression. His momma’s face had grown blurry over the years, and when he tries to recall it, it appears as if his mother’s face had been blurred by smeared ink. Sadly, he can’t even remember her smile any more.

 

 His mind wasn’t in the right places. He hadn’t felt this tired since he trained with Chris, all those years ago. The instincts instilled into him by the training return and he knows that he musn’t lose. He musn’t let Byron have his way.

 

 “Marleen,” he replies before Byron can say anything. “Marleen Arclight will be her name.”

 

 The one thing that he will never forget about his momma. Her name. The woman that had tormented Byron in his youth. Talked about by Byron as if she were a plague, long after she died. A small and sweet victory.

 

 Of course, he paid dearly for it once everyone besides Byron had left. But to this day, the girl is still called Marleen. He relishes calling her name, just to get a rise out of Byron. Small victories. Mere illusions that took him away from this miserable reality. But any chance of respite, he would take. That was how desperate he had become. Kaito walks towards his bed and feels exhaustion overcome his body. Slowly, he climbs underneath the sheets and closes his eyes. Tonight, he prays that Byron wouldn’t come.

  
  
  
  
  
  


   


 

 

_Knock. Knock._ It’s sad how familiar that soft sound has become. Kaito knows that he must answer and takes in a deep breath, preparing himself. It was one of those nights. 

 


End file.
